


The Space Between

by ignis_scientia_estrogen_brigade



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Gen, Lestallum (Final Fantasy XV), Lost in Wars Zine, Older Chocobros (Final Fantasy XV), Ring of the Lucii (Final Fantasy XV), World of Ruin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-14
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:00:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27551161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignis_scientia_estrogen_brigade/pseuds/ignis_scientia_estrogen_brigade
Summary: What precisely happened the moment Ignis Scientia donned the ring of the Lucii? What becomes of a man when he crosses over to the Astral plane without the requisite bloodline?
Comments: 11
Kudos: 75
Collections: Lost in Wars - A FFXV World of Ruin Zine





	The Space Between

**Author's Note:**

> Companion fic I wrote to accompany the art piece I created for the Lost In Wars zine (found here: https://twitter.com/i_s_e_b/status/1327442990965563392).

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

The once-soothing plink of water droplets trickling from a faucet sounds like a cacophony in Ignis Scientia’s ears. They’re more sensitive these days, along with the other senses mercifully left intact to him. He can feel the vibrations coming from the transistor radio perched on a chair a few feet away, which is currently broadcasting the latest daemon sightings in Cleigne. He can taste the ever-present acridity of ozone in Lestallum’s hazy air, courtesy of the EXINERIS factory operating day and night to power one of the last bastions of humanity in Lucis. He can even pick up on the faint smell of dog, oddly enough, which would ordinarily be out of place in the strategist’s apartment—he didn’t own a canine companion, for service purposes or otherwise—but the odor had mysteriously presented itself on occasion in the weeks and months since Noct had disappeared.

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

Or perhaps it isn’t the sound of water dribbling from a leaky tap that is tormenting his eardrums, but rather the blood pouring down his right cheek and into the bathwater that presently surrounds him. He had come an astonishingly long way in a short amount of time to compensate for the loss of his eyesight, handling sharp knives in the kitchen again within weeks and abandoning his cane entirely before the first year was over. But there was much and more he still struggled with, and combat against daemons was challenging at the best of times even with the full use of one’s senses, and Ignis had taken a punishing strike from a Red Giant not one hour before that had left him nearly senseless. Among the injuries he is nursing in the bloodied porcelain tub: a lacerated forehead, two cracked ribs, a concussion, and a blow to his pride no amount of epsom salt could help relieve.

Lucis wasn’t going to defend itself against the scourge-infested beasts that terrorized the night, however, and even a blind man flailing about with a pair of daggers was better than no help at all. There were very few individuals left in the kingdom who were equipped with the skills necessary to curb the onslaught; the power of the Kingsglaive had been restored in the aftermath of the covenant, yes, but their numbers were scarce after so many had perished in Insomnia during the signing of the peace treaty. And so, in spite of his own personal shortcomings, it had never been a question as to whether Ignis would take up arms alongside his fellow Crownsguard and fight for the salvation of Lucis until her king returned.

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

A shiver of anxiety races down Ignis’ spine. Just as the sound of his blood dripping into the bath reminds him of his own fallibility, it also dredges up painful memories. Rain dripping down the windshield of the Regalia after the fall of Insomnia. The Tidemother’s wrath dripping from the bleak Altissian skies and pelting the altar around his broken spectacles. Tears dripping down his face as his last glimpse of Noct melts away forevermore.

Icy words spoken in a voice dripping with judgment.

He flexes the fingers on his left hand. It’s a wasted effort, for the strategist knows he will never be rid of the deep ache there for as long as the Astrals allow him to walk a mortal life. The physical wounds that ravage his body are but a minuscule reflection of the scars permanently etched onto his soul; some knowledge was not meant for the human mind to bear, some planes of existence not intended to be traversed by those without the requisite bloodline. 

But he _had_ crossed over into the divine realm with nary a drop of kingly blood, had somehow bent the Ring of the Lucii to his will just as the glaive Nyx Ulric was rumored to have done on that fateful night in Crown City. Ignis’ recollection surrounding the moment he slipped on the ring is locked behind a labyrinth of hazy memories too jumbled to decipher any meaningful narrative from. It was as if the past, present, and future had all collided in an instant: a young boy touched by the light of the night sky, a father with sorrow in his eyes, a big man and a small man helping a blind man, cold steel piercing the heart of a king and breaking his own, a dog, a white dog, her dog, imparting on him a vision of a future that had not yet come to pass, a future that would come to pass, a future that _must not_ come to pass—

“You call upon the wards of this world’s future, mortal. And if you come lusting for our power, you must first stand in our judgement.”

Time passes differently here, where the celestial and corporeal intersect. For a moment, all is dark, darker than the furthest depths of Pitioss, so dark that the notion of light seems like a memory lost to the eons of time. Gone are the sounds of the Hydraean’s shrieks piercing the air, of the chancellor’s nefarious bargaining, of his own desperate cries to summon the rulers of Lucis past. They are replaced with a near-deafening silence, and the ominous _drip, drip, drip_ of minutes and hours and millennia slipping away.

A tendril of cold air licks at the back of Ignis’ neck, causing the hairs there to stand on end. “The only power I seek is to save a life,” he calls out in the darkness.

One by one, divine beings of pure light flicker into existence before him. “Power is power, no matter how magnanimous,” one glowing apparition says. “Even altruism is rooted in selfish desire.”

The Kings of Yore were no strangers to those with even a middling knowledge of Lucian history; their effigies had been memorialized on statues and monuments across the kingdom for centuries, and Ignis recognizes the massive suit of segmented armor and tattered cape swaying toward him as belonging to that of King Tonitrus, the Fierce.

“I wish to save the king,” Ignis says.

The Fierce stops a few feet away from him and hefts his great mace. “The king cannot be saved.”

Ignis’ brow furrows in confusion. “He is the last in the line of Lucis. He must be saved, or the power of kings falls with him— _you_ fall with him.”

Another voice interjects, this one from the Pious King. “And yet he will fall just the same.”

“You are the wards of this world’s future, did you not say so yourself?” Ignis pivots around, spreading his arms wide to address the circle of phantasms—thirteen in all—slowly pressing in on him. “You would allow for the fate of Eos to fall into malevolent hands?”

“Many have arrogantly endeavored to comprehend the mind of divinity,” the Rogue Queen counters, dragging the tip of her shuriken against the infinite blackness beneath their feet. “If you deign to castigate our motives, then your worth will be weighed to your detriment.”

Arguing with fickle spirits was a fool’s errand, Ignis knows, so he chooses his next words carefully. “Then I seek justice—justice for the innocent souls who are pawns in a game they did not choose to play.”

The Wise King steps forward, the numerous wings that embellish his armor encircling him like a feathered halo. “There are others who seek justice. Your opponent seeks it—what makes your brand of justice more righteous than his?”

Ignis frowns. _The chancellor, seeking justice?_ “Whatever retribution he is after is sought in the name of mayhem and destruction. If he truly seeks justice, he seeks it with malice in his heart.”

“And what lies in your heart, O mortal?”

Even without being able to see the eyes behind the helms, he can feel thirteen gazes penetrating him from all sides, watching, waiting, judging. To say Ignis Scientia was an individual without sin would be flagrantly false, and committing perjury in the presence of deities seemed like a quick way to meet one’s demise. He opens his mouth to speak, but no words come out; what case could he possibly make for his plight that would sway the will of the Divine? What mortal could be so brazen as to petition the gods themselves?

“I know this man’s heart. There is only good in it.”

A king with a visage Ignis did not recognize materializes before him. His voice, however, was as comforting and familiar to him as the Regalia’s steering wheel beneath his hands. It was a voice that had been present from his earliest days at the Citadel, one that had counseled him as a child and held counsel with him as a man, and it takes all of the strategist’s willpower to stop his own knees from buckling out of grief.

“Your Majesty,” he whispers.

The Father tilts his head in reverence, the crown that adorns his helmed brow in death glistening as gallantly as it once did in life.

“It appears you have been deemed worthy,” a voice booms from behind.

Ignis snaps his head around, his eyes falling upon a pair of horns curving away from a gilded helmet and twisting out into the darkness like two hypnotizing flames. The figure now circling him went by many names—the Founder King, the Mystic—but none could truly embody the sheer scope of awesomeness and terror this particular specter commanded.

“We will grant you the power to save your king,” Somnus Lucis Caelum says, “but the king cannot be saved.”

Ignis shakes his head in bewilderment. “I don’t understand.”

“Regardless, a deal has been struck. Now to agree on a price.”

“My life for his. No more, no less.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because a life cannot be exchanged for one whose destiny is preordained.”

“But—“

“You profess to seek justice. Do you speak the truth?”

Ignis’ fingers tighten around the ring bound to his left hand. “I do.”

For a moment, the only movement Ignis can discern from his audience are the glowing eddies of light swirling and flickering around their ghostly projections. Then, just as they had done when they first revealed themselves, each of the rulers of Lucis past vanish from existence one by one, until only a single king remains.

His light, too, begins to wane. “Justice is blind,” Somnus says, before fading into the darkness entirely. “The debt will be settled accordingly.”

The Ring of the Lucii begins to pulse furiously, and a sudden searing pain in Ignis’ left hand travels through his body like lightning—first up his arm, then his shoulder, then neck, before finally reaching his eye sockets. It was as if some unseen entity had reached through the back of his head and scraped out the inside of his skull with razor-sharp talons, a sensation so intensely agonizing and acute that his body moves entirely of its own volition to reach up and claw out his own eyeballs.

But when his hands meet his face, his fingers touch only old, faded scars.

How long had it been since he snatched the ring from the altar of Leviathan and set the wheels of fate in motion? Three years? Four? Ignis had been forced into an impossible position that was prophesied to end in only one way, but he still felt the fool. Perhaps if he’d had the acumen to accurately interpret Pryna’s vision before reaching Noctis and Lady Lunafreya, if he’d seen through the riddles to recognize he was playing right into the hands of chaos, he might have succeeded at bucking destiny—his own, and that of others. If only he could have stopped Ardyn sooner, if only the Oracle were still alive, if only he had known what would happen when Noct entered the crystal…

His hands fall from his face into the lukewarm bathwater, and he sighs. Regret was not a luxury Ignis could afford, not now, not when there was so much uncertainty in a world full of ruin. He had done what he thought was right in Altissia, had served his duty to the crown in ways that any member of House Scientia would be proud of. He had saved his king that day.

 _But the king cannot not be saved,_ a voice echoes in his mind, and the blood from his forehead is no longer the only thing trickling down his face.

_Drip. Drip. Drip._


End file.
